


On Sleeping And Waking Up

by dustyfluorescent



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:32:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1695023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyfluorescent/pseuds/dustyfluorescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Coulson is adorable when he's asleep. Five times when that saved his life, and one time it helped someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Sleeping And Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raiining](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiining/gifts).



> Yes, [ things happened on tumblr.](http://raiining.tumblr.com/post/86926944361/someone-write-me-a-five-times-fic-about-five-times) I was there. As a result, this fic happened. Surprisingly serious, considering the prompt.

1.

The house is empty except for a scrawny boy sleeping in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Jake thinks about it for a second, thinks about strangling the kid in his sleep. It would be so easy and then he could work in peace, get what he wants, and get out. He stands there, next to the kid’s bed, for a good five minutes, just clenching and unclenching his fists and not doing anything, wasting precious time. 

The kid is adorable. Can’t be more than ten years old. He’s snoring, kind of, his eyelids fluttering, his mouth half open. Jake thinks about his kid, his boy who he’s not seen in six years. Andy would be around the same age as this kid now, probably currently sleeping in a different house three states away from here, dreaming about cars or dinosaurs or superheroes or whatever it is that ten-year-old boys dream about these days. This boy, like Andy, is really not someone to kill. 

Jake has killed people before for much less reason than to secure a break-in. He turns away and leaves the kid to sleep. He tries to be quiet and makes it quick and leaves the Atari behind. Couldn’t have carried it anyway, he lies to himself as he starts the car in the driveway, the car that very much does not belong to him.

Phil wakes up to a house with decidedly less valuables than there were when he went to bed, and swears under his breath. Such a good house-sitter, he is. He’d sworn he’d be old enough to stay behind on his own, and this is how well he does. Mum and dad are going to be so mad. 

Phil is secretly relieved that the thief didn't take his brand new gaming console.

 

2.

Phil is sixteen when he goes to a party, gets drunk as fuck and high on some magical pills - he doesn’t even know what they do - and follows a good-looking stranger home in the hopes of getting laid because he has been a virgin for way too long. He does get laid and passes out shortly after, or so he thinks judging by how sore he is the next morning when he sneaks out of the stranger’s mingy flat, thanking every deity he can think of that he got out of there in one piece.

It’s not healthy being sixteen and desperately gay. Well, at least he isn’t desperately virginal anymore, even though the guy he’d gone home with had looked a lot less gorgeous in bright daylight. Phil swears to himself never to do anything like this again. He will probably do something like this again.

Henry wakes up with his gun in his drawer, one condom but not a single bullet missing, his bed empty of the underage twink he fucked the night before. After the boy had passed out, well-fucked and high as a kite, Henry had stared at him for a long time with a gun pointed at his head, cursing under his breath, and not pulling the trigger. The guy had been so cute like that, kind-of snoring with his mouth slightly open, drooling on Henry’s pillow, Henry’s come in his messed-up hair, and he just somehow - hadn’t done it. 

Fucking baby animal.

It doesn’t really feel like sex when the other guy gets to leave without a bullet hole in his head, but Henry swallows his disappointment and tries to think about the bright side of things. At least he doesn’t have to wash the blood off his sheets this time around, and getting rid of a dead body is never fun. 

 

3.

K finds the Americans sleeping. It’s ridiculously easy, and he can’t believe how much money he is going to get for so little effort. Kill them all, he’d been told, kill them and we will make you rich. Well, he can practically taste the money now. 

The guy keeping watch has nodded off. He looks green. K slits the boy’s throat and doesn’t even feel bad. Every drop of blood is dollars in his pocket. He doesn’t know these men; he knows his wife and children, he knows his brothers, sister and mother, and it’s them that this money is going to save.

Five others. K moves quietly, barely breathing, and he’s sure that his heart is beating slower now. His hands are dry and steady, he doesn’t stumble or hesitate. Each one of the Americans goes down with a well-placed flick of a wrist. Not a sound, and it’s over before they even notice the pain.

One left. K’s blade almost touching the man’s neck, and he is ready to be done with it and on his way home when his breath catches in his throat and he can’t bring himself to move his hand any further. 

The last man is snoring lightly, he must be at least twenty-five but like this, his eyebrows scrunched, mouth lax, he doesn’t even look eighteen. What he does look like is K’s baby brother, the last face he’d seen before leaving home, the last forehead he’d kissed before slipping out and running away to change their life. It’s the way he snores, so that it isn’t even snoring, really more like a childish snuffle. The way he’s frowning in his sleep. He looks like a child and at the same time like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

K’s hand trembles. Two drops of blood fall on the man’s neck and his eyes shoot open in an instant. K jumps backwards and kicks the man in the head hard enough to knock him unconscious before scrambling away, his heart lodged in his throat, his breaths shallow and erratic.

He’s fucked it up. He’s fucked his whole life up, everything, and he can’t go back, he can’t go back there and kill the man who looks like his baby brother when he’s sleeping.

The next time Phil Coulson wakes up, he’s surrounded by familiar corpses with cut throats, and he has a killer headache, two drops of blood dried on his own neck, and no idea why he of all people is still alive, still forced to suffer in the inferno that is human existence, and he can’t even cry with how sick he feels, how guilty.

 

4.

The mission in Moscow is an epic clusterfuck, and it’s very fucking close to turning into an even bigger one. The safehouse is compromised but the comms are down, and Phil has decided not to give a fuck about that particular detail. There is no way they can let him know fast enough that going where he is headed is practically suicide. Nick swears under his breath and prays to a God he’s long since stopped believing gives a fuck about what his unruly playthings do in their free time.

Phil does not, in fact, care. He’s dealt with it the best he can - and that is really fucking well considering the circumstances, thank you very much - and what he wants now is a nap and a shower. In that order, probably, because he doubts he can stay awake long enough to even take his shoes off after he’s made it to relative safety. Hell, he might not make it to the bed before he clocks out. He’s not slept for sixty-eight hours.

He barely has the energy to make sure he’s alone before stumbling to the bed and falling asleep, still covered in grime and blood, the moment his head hits the pillow. 

That’s where Natalia finds him. She can’t believe this is actually the best the Americans have to offer, an average-looking suit with thinning hair dozing away on top of the covers like he hasn’t got a care in the world. Not the best time to take a break, but she isn’t going to complain. It makes her job a hell of a lot easier, if a bit boring, if the target isn’t going to even try to fight back.

She lifts his chin with her index finger because she likes to say goodbye to the people she kills. The man looks like he needed the nap, his face pale and gaunt under all the blood and grime, dark bruises under his eyes. He snorts in his sleep and goes back to dozing peacefully, kind of snoring and not-snoring at the same time, and it’s weird but kind of cute, and Natalia doesn’t care, she’s been trained not to, but she feels strangely vulnerable for a second, and then she feels safe, and the man frowns and takes a deep, shaky breath with an edge of pain to it, and Natalia bites her lip.

The fight goes out of her. She doesn’t want to kill this man, and she doesn’t care what they want her to do. He’s tired, and suddenly she’s tired too. Tired of everything her life is. She feels like she’s six years old again and doesn’t know where her mother is. 

He looks so peaceful, and so human. Natalia doesn’t want to break that. 

She slips out of the window and pretends she was never there. 

 

5.

The first time Natasha is brought into S.H.I.E.L.D., she’s this close to losing her mind. She can’t believe she’s still alive. She can’t believe they still want something from her, or maybe it’s someone else, and she can’t imagine anything anyone else might want from her either.

They keep her locked away for quite some time. She can’t be trusted around anyone, not really. It takes a long time for her to stop fighting, and an even longer time for her to give in.

When they tell her what they want her to do, she almost kills them all over again. She doesn’t. She signs the paperwork instead and becomes a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and doesn’t quite understand how she of all people has ended up here.

“You’re not the only broken one,” Coulson tells him. “You’re not the only one here with red in their ledger.”

Natasha likes Coulson. He understands people, even people such as Natasha. People she didn’t think anyone would even want to understand anymore. 

She becomes more like an actual person every day. She learns to care about people. She learns to care about herself, and it’s difficult. Sometimes it’s hard and she can’t sleep or look at herself or look at anyone, but it’s increasingly okay, actually, and she feels she can trust people again. Mostly Coulson. She trusts Coulson. She knows better than to trust Fury but she thinks she trusts even him more than anyone else she ever knew before S.H.I.E.L.D. And maybe, just maybe, she is starting to trust Barton, the man who made the call to save her life and bring her in, a decision she is more and more at peace with each passing day.

Every now and then, there is a bad dream, and once the dream is worse than usually and she’s not asleep when it happens. She just stops being Natasha and turns into someone else, someone she was before, and before she knows what she’s doing she finds herself in Coulson’s office, pointing her gun at Coulson’s head, ready to shoot, and then she stops.

Coulson’s fallen asleep. He’s snoring, drooling on his paperwork, looking at peace with himself and the world, decades younger than he is. Natasha stops because she realises she’s seen this man before, remembers this is not the first time she’s decided not to kill him.

They find her there, shaking on the floor in Coulson’s office, not crying because she doesn’t cry ever, doesn’t know how to, but at that moment she doesn’t know how to breathe, either.

 

\+ 1

Clint wakes up in the middle of the night, panting, sweating, a scream stuck in his throat, and for a second he doesn’t remember where he is. He wants to run, he wants to fight, he wants to die. A cold something is taking him over, and he can’t feel his own will anymore.

Someone shifts in the bed next to him, and Clint remembers.

It’s over. He’s with Phil. He’s himself, has been for a long time, Phil is alive and sleeping next to him, and it’s okay. Clint counts his limbs, counts his fingers and toes, he counts his heartbeats and breathes a bit deeper, a bit slower. He knows how this is done by now, and he knows what the next step is, the one that helps the most - more than shooting arrow after arrow at the crack of dawn until his fingers bleed, and what the fuck is that about - the one he pretends has nothing to do with helping him calm down but without which it would all be a bit useless.

Okay, whatever. He’s in love. So what. 

Clint slips out of bed and tiptoes to the kitchen. He drinks two big glasses of water and looks out of the window, looks at the sky above New York, too early for the sun to be rising yet. When he’s sure he’s awake and back in his own body in this moment, he goes back to bed and lies down on his side to face Phil. 

He lies there and listens to Phil’s familiar sort-of-snoring that Clint has never mentioned to him even though it would be so easy to make fun of, he's never mentioned it because he loves it and doesn’t want Phil to know that, and he knows that if he were ever to make fun of it he’d give himself away in an instant. Phil always knows when Clint has emotions. If he didn’t, their thing would never work, because Clint doesn’t do talking about emotions, he doesn’t know how that works. With Phil, though, he doesn’t have to, because Phil knows him, and Phil understands.

Clint watches Phil sleep, watches the curve of his lip and the way his lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, the way he frowns sometimes, and how he looks so young like this. Clint listens to Phil’s snoring and it sounds like home. Clint listens to Phil’s breathing and finds that it’s actually not that hard to fall asleep, after all, not when he’s safe.


End file.
